Ju-on 2--Closing Write-up

"The Horror Queen of the movies taking on an actual haunted house makes for a good show.'

"I’m a little disappointed…I thought it’d be scarier."

So the crew plans on shooting at the actual house of the grudge, basically inviting terror. Myths and legends regardless of the residue of left behind them are easy to not take seriously. Scoffing at them seems easy in the cynical skepticism that comes with real life. The horror genre of Japan touches on this but because fiction in cinema allows for myths and legends to come true, we as viewers know that entering the cursed abode of Kayoko and Toshio is just a bad idea all around. In the Megumi segment (Megumi is the eccentric make-up artist who seems to have a type of ESP, and a chain of amulets, Kyoko notices…), Shimizu starts to unveil why the characters are under the grudge of Kayako and Toshio. So you have an actress, a director, a make-up artist, news crew, and the numbers tell us that the grudge will continue to spread if just because of the notoriety that comes with a house that had a history of violence. A housewife is murdered by her husband who then commits suicide. The boy child was drowned, although in Ju-on 2, he’s established as missing. When a news reporter talks of going into the home, I can just imagine the thoughts of many (perhaps some screaming at the scream) crying aloud, “Noooooo….don’t do it!”

There are instances where I can only imagine many viewers will consider unintentional humor (or perhaps, intentional)…a member of the film crew is attending to wigs, one of them thrown to the floor by her when it moved in her hand. Then the wig, on the floor, crawls towards her. Another moment comes in the Tomoko segment where Tomoko is lynched by Kayako’s hair while Nori was hanging not far from her (his face turned white), having succumbed to the strangling, and we see a “sea of hair”, with Kayako’s bluish face in the middle. It was hard for me to determine if it unsettled or tickled me. For damn sure, it was bizarre. That effect couldn’t be denied.

I like that Shimizu didn’t just rest his laurels on Ju-on. I think Marebito was a film in the wake of Ju-on that deserves not only a second look but stands on its own as an unnerving experience that seems to unsettle. And Reincarnation was kind of lumped in the Afterdark Films 8 films to die for and stood out from the other films because of the film’s director’s skills at building to that crescendo that fulfills its obligations towards solving the central mystery in a way that is satisfying (a master at weaving multiple stories, an approach he seems most comfortable at, we see how “past life” is used as a storytelling device, as well as, how fashioning a script on a horrific event can give birth to something possibly evil, even on good intentions). I’m glad he’s still working, that’s for sure.

"The people at that location. One after the other."

The film director explains to his star that his cameraman and soundman were also missing, along with Mesumi, also spilling the beans about reporter Tomoko’s hanging. As the film enters the home stretch, the plot is starting to unfurl. Chiharu is just a schoolgirl who listens to her school chum and goes to work as an extra on the movie at the house of the grudge curse.  

The Chiharu segment of the movie is really intriguing because we see her trapped “in the in-between”, alternating from what happens naturally in “her own environment” and trapped in the house with Kayako pursuing her. With her friend one minute, in the dark of the Kayako house the next. No matter where she runs, the grudge is there. I think this best implies that once you are caught in the grips of the grudge, resistance is futile. You are doomed. I have to say that when Chiharu sees her body lifeless on the pavement, cradled in her friend’s arms, starting to leave the ground with Kayako starting to tentacle her arms around the poor girl, it encapsulates just how terrible the grudge really is. Shimizu literally shows us what the grudge does to the poor soul caught in its cross-hairs.

I have read feedback from those trying to give their own interpretation of the ending which is quite a mindful to digest. I think the girl is the grudge given human form thanks to Kayako’s “birth” from the womb. I read one felt that because the grudge continues to envelope humans, it attains human traits/characteristics, hence the desire to “be human”. That’s the whole point of the surrealistic presentation…it lets you contemplate and conjecture. When Kyoko was no longer needed, as her services as the womb for the grudge baby had been utilized, Kayako could be rid of her. There’s plenty of “why did Kyoko manage to survive when others aren’t so lucky?” and when the ending comes, a body bleeding on the steps overlooking train tracks after being pushed down the flight, it become pretty clear to me that she was a vessel, just a host for the time being, and her services were no longer required.

 

Lots of Kayako and Toshio for those who watch a Grudge movie and want their specters. Blue-skinned, blood streaks down Kayako’s face and hands, her body contorted, the voice that reverberates, the mother specter is used aplenty, and Toshio shows up often, freaking those humans cursed out. Some really cool spots in the movie. I have included as many images as I possibly could to emphasize this. Again, Shimizu follows like-minded Japanese horror filmmakers in that he uses technology in ways to show them. Like a camera capturing Kayako, papers from a copy machine slowly showing Kayako forming from the void, Toshio slowly forming from darkness on a monitor, etc. When you see a mocking of the Yūrei genre, Ju-on 2 has moments that fit right into those comedies. Lots of black hair, for instance. I don’t think Toshio ever made the sound of a cat when he opened his mouth in this 2003 sequel, but the little ghoul boy is also so identifiable to the Yūrei genre so popular after Ringu and Ju-on set the horror genre on fire. But because so many gluttoned the genre after their popularity caught on fire with American (and global) audiences, they also started to resemble each other until interest waned. I couldn’t tell you the list of movies I went through just on Netflix one day just looking for a film similar to Ju-on but unique enough not to mimic it completely. Oodles of these movies were made. I do miss that boom, I must admit, but it doesn’t surprise me that interest peaked around 2004. Those American remakes of Ringu and Ju-on may have had a lot to do with that, though.